If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?

By Raj Raghunathan

INTRODUCTION

• We remember the past as having been more pleasant for two main reasons. First, we tend to cope better with the big negative events than we expect to; so the impact of a romantic breakup or of the failure to get a dream job seldom lingers as long as we think it will. Second, we tend to give the negative events from our past a positive spin over time; thus, the heartbreak from being rejected for a prom date or the embarrassment from failing an important exam become, in due course, stories that make our life more colorful, rather than ones that cast a dark shadow on it. It is precisely because past negative events become more positive in our memory that women agree to go through a second childbirth and authors agree to write a second book.

• One of the most trying periods in our lives is adolescence: not only do we look and behave awkwardly then, we also feel our worst. The graph also confirms the so-called midlife crisis: our most miserable days as an adult typically occur between the ages of forty and fifty. The fact that we were happier as kids than we are as adults raises an important question: what did we know as kids that we forget as adults? Or, more to the point: what do we know now, but did not as kids, that is hurting our happiness?

• Insights from the Mental Chatter Exercise: The mental chatter exercise calls for maintaining a brutally honest record, on a daily basis for a period of two weeks, of one’s naturally occurring thoughts. (You can read the instructions for the exercise on the book’s website: www.happysmarts.com) To successfully participate in the exercise, it is important to not steer your thoughts in a more positive direction when recording them, and to resist the tendency to find closure or meaning in interpreting the day’s events. This makes the mental chatter exercise very different from the more familiar practice of maintaining a journal. The mental chatter exercise requires that you maintain a full record of your negativity, because the spontaneously occurring negative thoughts are not meaningless, irrelevant thoughts that are randomly produced by the mind. Rather, they are rooted in deep-seated goals, desires, and values. Attempting to override negative chatter with positive thinking is akin to popping peppermints to smother bad breath: it may address the symptom but will not address the cause. In other words, if one aspires not just to enhance one’s well-being but to sustain this enhancement, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the goals, desires, and values that are responsible for the negative mental chatter.

• Although there is a small positive relationship between wealth and happiness, it is not as significant as one might expect it to be. Fame too, has little effect on happiness, findings show.

• Thoughts related to inferiority, for example, are rooted in the tendency to engage in social comparisons (e.g., “keeping up with the Joneses”), which, in turn, is rooted in the desire for superiority. Thoughts about lack of love and connectivity are, likewise, rooted in insecurities about relationships, manifested through either “neediness” (or relationship anxiety) or “avoidance.” Similarly, thoughts about lack of control are rooted in the desire for control, and in the tendency to be a “maximizer”—someone who has an irrepressible urge to make things better.

• Many of us believe, for example, that the need for superiority—the desire to be the wealthiest, fastest, strongest—is a very important determinant of success. Likewise, we believe that the ability to be an “island”—emotionally unaffected by others—is a defining feature of strong leaders, and that success comes to those who seek to control others and the environment. In fact, however, evidence does not support any of these beliefs. For example, although the need for superiority may motivate us to pursue goals, it is, overall, more a hindrance than a help when it comes to achieving them. Likewise, the world’s best leaders are not emotionally distant, but rather are compassionate and kind. The need for control, too, has its limits, and being overly controlling is not the optimal way to succeed. So in other words, I discovered that it’s best to let go of the behaviors, goals, and values that were fueling our negative mental chatter and replace them with the other behaviors, goals, and values that are more productive. Doing so would not only improve our happiness levels, but also improve our odds of success.

CHAPTER 1

THE FIRST DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: DEVALUING HAPPINESS

• Imagine that you are in a very satisfying romantic relationship with a wonderful boyfriend. However, there is one area in which you want him to improve: lose weight. You give him good advice on how to lose weight, but he never follows your advice. This continues for several months. Then one day, he comes home very excited and tells you that he has met someone who has motivated him to adopt a new lifestyle—a lifestyle that will enable him to lose weight. As he tells you about this new lifestyle, you recognize that it is actually very similar to the one that you had been recommending to him all along! Your partner appears to have been persuaded by another person to make the very changes that you have been asking him to make. What would you do? Option A: Point out (angrily!) to him that the other person has not told him anything new. Option B: Congratulate him for having figured out how to achieve his goal. In this scenario, a majority of participants (85 percent) reported that Option B was better suited for enhancing happiness than Option A. These people recognized that in relationships, you can often either be right or happy—not both. And yet, when we asked a different set of participants to choose one of the two options for themselves, only 72 percent selected Option A. So 13 percent (or about one in eight) seemed willing to sacrifice happiness for the sake of “being right.”

• Imagine that you have two job offers: Job A is high paying, and accepting this job will make you rich. This job will also set you on the path to a successful professional career. However, you have been told by former students who have taken up this job that the work is very uninteresting, stressful, and involves long hours. Further, the people who work at this job are known to be difficult to get along with. Job B, on the other hand, does not pay as well as Job A; in fact, it pays only about half as much. While this salary is sufficient for a decent life, it won’t make you rich. However, the work will be much more to your liking than the work in Job A, and the people who work at this job are easy to get along with and genuinely nice. Which job would you pick? As usual, we asked one group of students to pick the option better suited for enhancing happiness. A majority (78 percent) picked Job B, the intrinsically motivating job with lower pay.

• So in our next study, my colleagues and I simulated the conditions of a job interview. Here’s what happened. Students took part in a “test” that involved answering twelve questions on various topics. The idea was to get the students to experience some “competitive stress”—the type of stress they typically experience during the job interview season.

• Then both sets of students were exposed to the same two job descriptions (Job A and Job B) and asked to choose one. In both groups, we expected a proportion higher than 26 percent—which, as you may recall, was the proportion that chose the extrinsically motivating job when there was no stress—to choose the higher-paying job. We also expected that the proportion would be higher among those in the “job stress” group than among those in the “personality stress” group. Our expectations were confirmed: 55 percent of students in the “job stress” group, and 44 percent of those in the “personality stress” group, chose the extrinsically motivating job. What these results show is that the more a situation induces stress, and the more this stress resembles the type of stress associated with interviewing for jobs, the more one is likely to sacrifice happiness and choose the extrinsically motivating job.

• The most straightforward implication is that, although happiness is a very important goal for most people—as we saw from the happiness surveys—they also seem to devalue it as they go about their lives. That is, people seem to routinely sacrifice happiness for the sake of other goals.

THE FIRST HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: PRIORITIZING—BUT NOT PURSUING—HAPPINESS

• A rich American banker was once vacationing in a small Mexican fishing village. One day, he found himself sitting on the dock next to a fisherman from the village and they got talking. The banker soon figured out that the fisherman was quite sharp—sharp enough, in fact, to be a successful banker on Wall Street. “You know,” said the American at one point, “you are really smart. I bet you could easily be a very successful investment banker on Wall Street.” “But why would I want to be an investment banker?” asked the fisherman. “So that you could earn some big bucks,” said the banker, flashing his Rolex watch for emphasis. “And then?” asked the fisherman innocently. “What would I do with all the money?” “Why,” said the American excitedly, “you could retire early! And who knows, if everything works out well, you could even dream of settling down in a small Mexican village like this one here and do nothing but fish all day!”

• Another negative belief that many of us harbor about happiness is that it will make us selfish. This, again, turns out to be a misconception. Findings show that we are likely to be kind and caring when we are happy. Here, again, is just a small sample of findings on the topic: Happy people volunteer more. Happy people are also more likely to judge others favorably, and are more willing to share their good fortune with others more equitably. People in happy moods (versus those in sad or neutral moods) contribute more money to charity; people in happy moods are also more likely to donate blood.

• Medium maximization refers to the propensity to forget all about the end goal that one wants to achieve, and to pursue, instead, the means (or mediums) to that end goal.

• When there was no medium, participants chose the short task, but when the medium was introduced, participants favored the long task. Why? Because the medium distracted them from what they ultimately wanted (which is enjoyment of the candy) and made them focus, instead, on maximizing the medium (points).

• People can get so caught up in chasing money that they forget all about why they wanted the money in the first place.

• What they also show is that money is not the only medium that distracts us from happiness; other goals—like the desire to be right, and to have beauty, fame, or prestige—can too.

• Recall “my most interesting finding” to date—the finding that the likelihood of happiness being on people’s Genie wish list shoots up when they are reminded about happiness. This finding suggested to us that simply reminding people to make happiness-enhancing decisions could lower their tendency to be distracted by other goals and hence help them overcome the sin of devaluing happiness.

• One group received an e-mail every day for a whole week. The e-mail gently reminded them to make happiness-enhancing decisions. The second group did not receive any such e-mail. Then we asked both groups to tell us how happy they were at the end of the week. We found that those who received the daily e-mail reminders were far happier by the end of the week than those who didn’t. Our findings also showed that the reason they were happier was because they made happiness-enhancing choices such as going to a kids’ baseball game, rather than sitting at home and watching TV, when they received the e-mail reminders.

• But although the strategy is simple, it comes with an important caveat: reminding oneself to make happiness-enhancing choices can improve happiness levels, but it’s important not to pursue or chase happiness. Why? Because when one pursues happiness, one is likely to compare how one feels with how one would ideally like to feel, and since we generally want to feel happier than we currently do, we are likely to feel unhappy about being unhappy if we pursue happiness! So while it is a good idea to prioritize happiness, it is not a good idea to pursue it, as several studies have found. So the question is: how does one pull off this delicate balancing act—of prioritizing, and yet not pursuing, happiness? One way is to consider how we pursue some other important goals in life that, like happiness, cannot be pursued too directly. Consider sleep. Constantly watching out for the moment when you fall asleep and telling yourself, “There! I almost fell asleep right there!” is, as several insomniacs have discovered, a better recipe for staying awake than it is for dozing off. A better way to get a good night’s sleep is to take some steps—like eating a light dinner, working out, and perhaps most important, not getting into a heated argument with one’s spouse about which TV channel to watch—that increase the odds of falling asleep, but then, having taken these steps, not monitor whether one is about to fall asleep. That’s the way to prioritize, but not pursue, sleep. And in much the same fashion, the way to prioritize, but not pursue, happiness is to take some steps that increase the odds of being happy.

• That brings us to the two steps for increasing the odds of experiencing happiness on a more regular basis: (1) Defining happiness and (2) Incorporating happiness.

• Daniel Kahneman—the Nobel laureate and professor of psychology and public affairs emeritus at Princeton University—has noted, there are two types of happiness that most of us care about, and it turns out that these two types of happiness do not always go together. One type of happiness has to do with immediate, visceral feelings—for example, how pleasant or unpleasant you feel at this moment. The other type of happiness has to do with a more holistic assessment of how satisfied you are with your life. The former type of happiness has to do with your immediate life circumstances (for example whether you are feeling sick today or have just had a sumptuous meal), while the latter has more to do with the “bigger picture” (for example your bank balance or the quality of your relationships). So one could feel “happy” or “satisfied” with one’s life overall (because things looks good in the “big picture”) and yet be unhappy at the level of immediate emotions—or vice versa.

• My colleagues and I have successfully used this approach to get at people’s definition of happiness. In one survey, we asked 188 respondents to recollect and write about a recent event that made them “happy.” Then, with the help of two research assistants, we analyzed the content of their responses. Our findings revealed that people predominantly associate the word “happiness” with four types of emotions: love/connection, joy, authentic pride, and hubristic pride. Here’s how these emotions may be defined: Love/connection is the feeling associated with being in an intimate relationship. Although love/connection is usually felt in connection with another person or a pet, it can also be felt with an activity (like playing tennis), an event (like a concert), or an object (like a pen). Joy stems from the feeling that life is going well—one feels safe and secure—and that it is okay to let one’s guard down and be playful or even silly. Authentic pride is the feeling associated with having achieved something important and worthwhile, such as making a great presentation or helping others achieve a goal. Hubristic pride is the feeling that arises from recognizing that “I am special, superior”; hubristic pride involves either an implicit or an explicit comparison with another person, and is accompanied by the perception of one’s own superiority over the other. These are, of course, not the only emotions with which people associate “happiness.” Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her colleagues have found that there are at least seven other “positive emotions” that people experience regularly, and each of these emotions could easily be associated with the word “happiness.” These emotions include serenity, awe, inspiration, interest, and hope.

• In addition to these emotions, there are two others that, in my opinion, merit attention. Let’s call these emotions harmony and abundance. Harmony is the feeling that arises from not wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else.

• Here’s the other definition of happiness—happiness as “abundance”: Abundance is the feeling that results from the belief that one has enough—indeed, more than enough—of anything and everything that one could want from life: money, love, good fortune, and the like. Abundance stems from the belief that, no matter how dire a situation might be, every little thing will be all right in the end. When we are feeling abundant, life seems like a cozy mess: perfect despite its imperfections.

• It is this rare combination of two seemingly contradictory traits—full acceptance and full engagement (including the desire to change things)—that makes harmony and abundance so alluring as definitions of happiness.

• Both harmony and abundance have less to do with external circumstances and more to do with internal ones. They both hinge on the capacity to—as the authors put it—“deal with whatever comes his way in life.”

• Defining happiness—that is, having a relatively concrete idea of what happiness means to you—is the first of the two steps in the first happiness exercise. The second step is to figure out the set of things that makes you feel happy in the way that you have defined it. This step involves recalling previous occasions when you felt happy in the way that you have defined it, and making a list of things—activities, people, objects, experiences, and so on—that triggered that positive feeling. For example, if you choose to define happiness as love/connection, you would think back to previous occasions in which you felt this emotion and identify its determinants (like hanging out with friends, vacationing with family). Likewise, if you defined happiness as harmony, you would list the things (like going for a run, practicing mindfulness) that made you experience that emotion. In other words, the second step involves creating a “portfolio” of things (pictures, songs, people, and activities) that you believe are reliable determinants of happiness as you have defined it.

• By taking the effort to define happiness, we give it greater prominence; as we saw earlier, we give greater importance to things that are more concrete and easier to process. And by identifying the set of things that lead us to feel happy, we recognize the types of judgments and decisions we need to be making in order to enhance our happiness levels.

• I also realized that it is precisely because we tell our children what to value—money, status, beauty, power, etc.—that they learn to lose sight of what makes them truly happy.

CHAPTER 2

A THE SECOND DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: CHASING SUPERIORITY

• So apart from the desire for others’ approval and the desire for self-esteem, the need for mastery is another reason why we seek superiority.

• Researchers have conducted a number of follow-up studies to find out exactly why status improves health and happiness, and their results reveal that status matters because of two main reasons. Self-esteem is one of them. Those higher in status enjoy better self-esteem and, as a result, are happier. The other reason is control—or autonomy. Those higher in status perceive themselves to have greater autonomy and control over their own decisions and this makes them happier.

• Although being superior enhances happiness levels, it turns out that the pursuit of superiority lowers happiness levels.

• Controlling for one’s current status, the greater the need for superiority, the lower the happiness levels. This means that regardless of how wealthy, famous, powerful, or attractive you are compared with others, the more you strive for superiority, the less happy you will be.

• As it turns out, the proxy yardsticks of wealth, power, and fame, while offering the benefit of being quantifiable, come saddled with a very heavy problem: they make us focus on accumulating extrinsic—or materialistic—rewards, and such a materialistic focus, it turns out, is one of the biggest happiness killers.

• The fact that we adapt to new levels of wealth, power, and fame—and other materialistic proxies for superiority—means that, if we were to tether our happiness to the need for superiority, we would need to become increasingly wealthy, powerful, and famous over the course of our lives to maintain high levels of happiness.

• Yet another reason why materialism lowers happiness is that it promotes self-centeredness and lowers compassion, making others less likely to cooperate with materialistic people, leading them to be less happy in the long run. Perhaps as a result of lower compassion, materialistic people are more likely to compromise on things that actually bring joy and happiness—things like hanging out with friends and family or contributing to society—in favor of money, power, and fame. Confirming these conclusions, a study in which researchers followed twelve thousand college freshmen for a period of nineteen years (from when they were eighteen, in 1976, to when they were thirty-seven, in 1995) showed that those for whom “making money” was the primary goal were far less happy with their lives two decades later. Other findings reveal that compared with nonmaterialistic people, materialistic people are more likely to suffer from mental disorders.

• Further, our perceived sense of superiority is affected more by how we believe our acquaintances—rather than our close friends or family members—perceive us.

• Specifically, findings show that the less attention you pay to how much better or worse than others you are, the happier you are likely to be; or conversely, the more you compare yourself with others, the less happy you will be.*

• To lead a happier life then, it is clear what we need to do: mitigate the need for superiority–but without jeopardizing the chances of being successful at what we do.

• It will help to watch out for situations that make us feel insecure—because it is when we feel insecure that we are more likely to seek superiority.

• One other factor that heightens the need for superiority is, ironically, material success. Exposure to symbols of material success—such as luxury goods—it turns out, makes us more self-centered and materialistic.

THE SECOND HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: PURSUING FLOW

• Is there something common to the experiences that people from various walks of life—from the plumber and the artist to the businessman and the scientist—find meaningful? And, if so, what is it?

• Paradoxically, time appears to both slow down and speed up when experiencing flow.

• A second defining feature of flow is the lack of self-consciousness. When experiencing flow, people report being so absorbed in the activity that they do not have any leftover attentional capacity to evaluate how well—or poorly—they are performing the activity. In other words, being in flow takes all the psychic energy that one has. It is only when the flow activity has ended or some external trigger (such as a beeper going off) interrupts flow that people are able to step back and evaluate their performance.

• A third feature of flow, a feature that, well, flows from the other two, is that of “being in the moment.” When experiencing flow, people report being acutely focused on the task at hand. Or more precisely, they report being fully engrossed in achieving the next immediate subgoal of the task.

• This is not to say that you would actively push away thoughts of future plans during flow; rather, your focus on the immediate task at hand would be a natural by-product of your absorption in the flow-inducing activity.

• This suggests that the desire to be absorbed—or to “get lost”—in flow is a fundamental need.

• Flow is most likely when your opponent’s skills are just, ever so slightly, higher than your own skills.

• In other words, flow is most likely when you are challenged, but not by too much or too little. Such situations, in which you are challenged to just the right level, ensure that you are learning and growing even as you are engaged in the activity.

• Yet another reason why flow enhances happiness levels has to do with others’ happiness. As mentioned earlier, flow experiences have the potential to enhance not just our own happiness, but also the happiness of others around us. Why? Because, very simply, people are inspired by seeing others in flow. Imagine being at a rock concert in which the band is, well, rocking. Or imagine listening to a nerdy—but passionate—professor deliver a lecture on his favorite topic. The fact that others derive inspiration from our flow suggests that pursuing flow is a much more sustainable source of happiness than is chasing superiority.

• That is, one person’s flow doesn’t have to come at the cost of another’s. By contrast, because extrinsic rewards are limited, an increase in one person’s wealth, power, or fame has to come at the cost of another’s.*

• The reason for this is that our processing capacity is limited; so the more of it we allocate to thoughts of wealth, fame, power, or other yardsticks of superiority, the less capacity we will have to devote to the task at hand. It is when we forget about extrinsic rewards and focus on the task at hand that we are likely to make the most progress.

• In fact, as most sports psychologists know, the factor that differentiates the truly great athletes from the merely good ones is not physical or technical ability; rather it is a mental ability—the ability to forget what just happened, to not think of what might happen in the future, and to pay attention, instead, to what’s happening right now.

• Across all these studies, a consistent pattern emerged: participants performed better when they didn’t have the pressure of a monetary reward hanging over their heads like Damocles’ sword.

• As those studies showed, extrinsic rewards and incentives—carrots and sticks—worsen (rather than improve) performance. The reason why extrinsic rewards hurt our performance is because they distract us from getting into flow; when we are rewarded or punished based on outcome of goal pursuit, we lose the ability to focus on the process of goal pursuit.

• If flow is a critical determinant of both happiness and success, then it follows that finding flow at work is important, as we spend the bulk of our “waking life” at work.

• The first and most obvious thing you can do, if you aren’t already doing it, is to reconnect with a hobby.

• The first is to start identifying where one’s talents lie and try to nurture those talents in one’s current job. If this means taking on more responsibility or bending one’s job description, so be it. This might take some courage and hard work, but it will be worth it. Second, identify the things that the community—city, country, or even the whole world—needs, and try to find ways to meet those needs.

• To Steven’s advice, I would add one more thing: get to do more of the things that you enjoy doing at work. The reason is because it’s often easier to answer the question “What do I enjoy doing?” than to answer the questions “What am I really good at?” or “What does the world need?”

• Even if one enjoys doing something, like writing, or designing products, building expertise takes dedication and effort. It takes what Angela Duckworth, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, calls “grit.” In other words, the process of building expertise is often painful in the short run, but this is the type of pain that’s worth enduring, because it is in the service of something larger, and more meaningful—the goal of building expertise which, as we saw earlier, is essential to experiencing “high flow.”

• Specifically, she finds that those who spend a few hours every week exposing themselves to people and activities involved in the job that they think would be more meaningful are often better off than those who, one fine day, quit their current job to take up another one.

• So almost any way you look at it, the “slow and organic” path to transitioning from your current and unsatisfying job to a more meaningful one may be a better strategy than that of jumping ship one fine day.

• The first component (self-kindness) involves treating yourself as you would a close friend or family member. One way to exhibit self-kindness is to think of what you would say to someone else who comes to you for support after experiencing a failure, and saying those very things to yourself. As you can imagine, self-kindness makes you feel less insecure. The second component, common humanity, involves recognizing that failures are a part of life and that everyone experiences them. That is, it involves realizing that failure is an unavoidable part of being human and that nobody is perfect. This component also makes one feel less insecure by affirming that one is not alone or separate from others. The final component is mindfulness, which involves being fully aware of what one is experiencing without denying or rejecting it, but in a kind and compassionate way. As we will see closer to the end of this book, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, being mindful lowers stress levels and improves positivity, thereby making one less insecure. Because all three components of self-compassion make one feel more secure, they mitigate the propensity to chase superiority.

• Although we are less likely to chase superiority when we aren’t feeling insecure, we can nevertheless reinforce the need for superiority even when things are going well—for example, by feeling hubristic pride and taking all credit for the success. Let’s say that you just got promoted. Or that you just aced a test. Normally, most of us can’t help but feel a tinge of hubristic pride when this happens. Even if we are modest when talking about the success to others, we are usually patting ourselves on the back in private, telling ourselves, “Raj, there’s no one quite like you!” or “Raj, you are the best; no one but you could have done it!” This might feel good in the moment, but in the long run, what it does is strengthen our need for superiority.

• Now, instead of patting ourselves on the back and feeling hubristic pride—or in addition to doing that—imagine doing something else. Imagine that you think of someone else who played a critical part in your success.

• The gratitude exercise hinges on the idea that no one achieves anything just by themselves. All of us, at one point or another, had to depend on others.

• There are several studies that show that expressing gratitude strengthens social bonds.

• So one way to think of gratitude is that it acts as a bridge between hubristic pride and connection. It takes you from a self-centered positive feeling—the feeling of hubristic pride—to an other-centered positive feeling: the feeling of love or connection. In this way, it takes you away from a type of happiness that doesn’t typically last very long to one that has the potential to last longer. And in that process, it helps mitigate the need for superiority by making you feel less isolated and more connected with others.

CHAPTER 3

THE THIRD DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: DESPERATION FOR LOVE

• In one experiment, baby monkeys were exposed to a threatening object, one that made loud clattering noises and resembled an aggressive adult monkey. When this object was introduced into the cage, the baby monkeys, which were naturally distressed, always sought out the cloth-and-foam (and not the wire-mesh) figure to cling to. In another experiment, Harlow and his team found that young monkeys reared with real (live) mothers and playmates easily learned to play and socialize with other young monkeys later in life. Those raised with the foam-and-cloth mothers were slower, but seemed to catch up socially by about a year. By contrast, monkeys raised with only the wire-mesh mothers became socially incompetent, and when older, were often unsuccessful at mating. Further, these unsocial adult females that did have babies were neglectful of them, indicating that the monkeys’ capacity for love and nurturance depended on whether they themselves had been sufficiently loved and nurtured as babies.

• When you are in love, it feels like nothing is more important than to be in close proximity to your partner. And indeed, at the height of passionate love, you feel that nothing and no one can stop you from wanting to merge with your partner. And when that feeling is reciprocated, no challenge seems insurmountable. Being in love, in other words, feels positive, potent, and powerful all at once, and unsurprisingly, therefore, is universally rated as one of our most cherished experiences.

• Asch’s findings, which have since been replicated in several other experiments, suggest that people have a “herd mentality”: we feel compelled to agree with others even if we know that they are wrong.

• In a set of experiments that my coauthor Kim Corfman and I conducted, we took a leaf out of Asch’s book and paired real participants with a confederate. We asked each participant-confederate pair to watch three short videos. One set of pairs watched videos that were entertaining, while another set watched videos that were boring. In the course of watching these videos, the confederates in half the cases behaved in a way that conformed to the participants’ reactions to the videos. For example, when it was clear that the participants were enjoying the videos, the confederates made statements or gestures that suggested they too were enjoying them. In the rest of the cases, the confederates behaved in a way that disconfirmed the participants’ reactions to the videos. For example, they made statements or gestures that suggested they found the entertaining videos to be boring.

• One would think that the quality of the videos—that is, whether the videos were entertaining or boring—would be the primary driver of enjoyment, but our results showed this wasn’t the case. We found that perceived agreement with the confederate was a much more potent driver of enjoyment. So for instance, viewing the boring videos was more enjoyable when the confederate agreed with them (and seemed to find the videos to be boring) than was viewing the entertaining videos when the confederate disagreed with them (and seemed to find the videos to be boring). These findings suggest that we care a lot more about whether others agree or disagree with us than we do about the “objective” quality of our shared experiences.

• John Cacioppo, a researcher who has spent a considerable part of his impressive career exploring the effects of feeling psychologically separated from others, finds that feeling lonely is perhaps the single biggest determinant of a host of psychological and physiological illnesses, ranging from depression and insomnia to obesity and diabetes. Interestingly, it is perceived (and not actual) loneliness that matters.

• Similar results were obtained in another, more exhaustive, study that tracked 268 men from entering college in 1938 to the late 2000s. Results showed that the strength of social relationships was the only characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from the rest.

• This is not surprising, because findings show that being socially excluded activates the same parts of the brain that get activated when we are physically hurt.

• But as critical as being loved is for being happy, the pursuit of this desire is also the cause of much misery and suffering. This is because there is a thin line separating a healthy desire for love and connection and an unhealthy desire for it.

• Being needy, as many of us have discovered the hard way, is not an attractive trait. In other words, you turn people off when you are needy. One reason for this is that the needy are often too easily available and people are programmed to devalue things that are easily available. Another reason why neediness lowers happiness levels is because it triggers loneliness—perhaps because people tend to avoid the needy.

• Although avoidants view themselves as strong and independent, it turns out that this self-view is mostly a façade. At a deeper level, avoidants too are just as eager for love and connection as the needy. But unlike the needy, they want others to take the initiative to connect with them. And when such initiative from others isn’t forthcoming—which is often the case, because being avoidant isn’t endearing—the avoidants find themselves isolated and bereft of meaningful connections.

• Fortunately, it turns out that attachment style can be altered. One study showed that mere exposure to words that connote intimacy, such as “love” or “hugs,” can at least temporarily boost feelings of relationship security. Similarly, another study showed that being asked to recall instances from one’s childhood in which one experienced love and nurturance can, at least temporarily, make one feel more secure.

• The first strategy for mitigating neediness is expressing gratitude. Findings show that those who express gratitude enjoy a richer social life.

• Another practice that has immense potential for mitigating neediness and avoidance is self-compassion.

• Another way by which the practice of self-compassion enhances relationship security is by deactivating the “threat system,” which is associated with feelings of insecurity and defensiveness, and activating instead the “self-soothing” system, which is associated, among other things, with secure attachment.

THE THIRD HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: THE NEED TO LOVE (AND GIVE)

• A second announcement confirmed that a fellow passenger had had a heart attack, and that the crew was looking for someone on board with a medical background. Our flight must have been an unusual one, for there were as many as three doctors and two nurses on it. As I watched these good Samaritans head to the front of the aircraft to assist the patient, I couldn’t help but feel a warm glow. I was heartened that so many people were willing to volunteer their services to help someone totally unknown to them. This episode hinted at something that I had long suspected: people have an innate desire to help others. Of course, a cynic might argue that the doctors and nurses were willing to help only because they were bored, or because they wanted to be seen as heroes by other passengers. Fair enough. But consider this: had they decided not to help unless they were paid for it, they could have made a killing (both literally and figuratively). The fact that they not only volunteered, but did so with genuine enthusiasm, suggests that their actions were spontaneously well intentioned.

• In a survey that posed a similar question, 63 percent (or close to two thirds) of respondents predicted that they would be happier if they spent the money on themselves than on someone else. And yet, thanks to some wonderful new research, we know that these respondents are wrong. You would, in fact, have been happier if you had spent the money on someone else.

• The effect of charity on life satisfaction wasn’t a trivial one either: it had the same effect as doubling household income!

• But exactly why does being kind and generous make us happier? One reason is that it takes the focus away from one’s own worries and problems and toward others’ worries and problems.

• Another reason why being kind and generous boosts happiness is because of reciprocity: people are, as you might expect, grateful when you are kind and generous to them, and this in turn boosts their happiness levels.

• The final and perhaps most compelling reason why being generous boosts happiness levels is because of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. When we are nice to others, we tell ourselves the story that we are kind and big-hearted—along the lines of “I am a king” or “I am a queen.” In other words, when we help others, we feel more capable, effective, and abundant. What’s truly remarkable about this is that we don’t need to be extravagantly generous in order to feel abundant—even a small gesture of generosity will do.

• However, as Adam Grant, author of Give and Take, argues on the basis of an impressively large number of findings, it is those who are kind and generous—the “givers,” as Grant calls them—who are most likely to succeed, even in the world of business. Consider the following remarkable finding: although people who earn more money are slightly more generous (unsurprisingly), those who are more generous earn significantly more. The economist Arthur Brooks has explored both directions of causality, and he finds that the effect of generosity on income is greater than the effect of income on generosity. In one study, he analyzed data from more than thirty thousand Americans, and found that, for every extra dollar earned, giving to charity went up by 14 cents (or 14 percent). By contrast—are you ready for this?—for every dollar donated, income went up by as much as $3.75—a whopping 375 percent! There is evidence from several other sources that givers are more likely to succeed in their careers than “takers.” (Takers, as the term suggests, are primarily interested in their own welfare and not in that of others.) In one study, researchers categorized people into one of two groups: “work altruists” or “work isolators.” Work altruists are those who are there for others—colleagues, family, friends—when the others need them. Work isolators, on the other hand, are those who look for help from others. In other words, work altruists are the givers in organizations and provide as much as twenty times more support to others than do work isolators, who are the takers. Findings from the study showed that work altruists are six times as likely to be promoted as are work isolators.

• So far, I have reviewed evidence to suggest that being kind and generous is one of the most reliable sources of both happiness and success. Does this mean that the more you give, the happier and more successful you will be? The answer is clearly no, and the reason is that, although being kind and generous can make you happier and more successful (for all the reasons I discussed), it also takes energy and resources. So giving beyond a point is likely to burn you out. In other words, there is such a thing as being “generous to a fault.” This is why, if you ever had to take care of someone 24/7, you were likely not a happy camper. One study showed that caretakers of Alzheimer’s patients are three times as likely to be depressed as the average person. Being too loving and giving can also lower success. Although studies show, as I mentioned earlier, that givers are most likely to succeed in their careers, what’s also true is that they are the least likely to succeed. This is not a contradiction. It turns out that there are two categories of givers, and only one of them rises to the top; the other category flounders. Adam Grant uses the term “selfless givers” to refer to those who give so indiscriminately that they burn out and end up at the bottom, and the term “otherish givers” to refer to those who are smart about how they practice generosity and often rise to the top. Otherish and selfless givers share an important common feature: they are both equally well intentioned. They both want to improve the welfare of others. However, the thing that differentiates them is that otherish givers aren’t indiscriminately generous. They are better at identifying when, how much, how, and to whom to give.

• There are two main strategies that otherish givers use to keep themselves from burning out. The first strategy is that they contain their cost of giving. In other words, they try to maximize the positive effects of their generosity. If they find that four or five people need the same type of help (e.g., coaching in calculus), they address their needs at the same time, rather than individually. If they believe that someone else would be a better source of help, they put help seekers in touch with these other people. And so on. In sum, otherish givers are efficient in practicing their generosity. The second strategy that otherish givers use is value expansion. In short, this strategy refers to managing one’s own emotional resources in order to not burn out. So for instance, otherish givers take (authentic, not hubristic!) pride in the beneficial ripples that their actions generate. They also feel grateful to be in a position to be kind and generous, which energizes them to continue to give.

• “Containing the cost of giving” and “value expansion” are such important elements in the otherish giver’s arsenal that they could be considered part of the “essential rules for giving.” To these rules, I would add a third: get to see the impact of your giving. Several findings confirm that those who get to witness the impact of their generosity derive the biggest boost in happiness.

• This may be why, as several researchers have documented, negative stimuli have a bigger psychological impact on us than do positive ones of equal magnitude—a phenomenon that some researchers have referred to as “bad is stronger than good.” For instance—as we will see in more detail in a future chapter—it takes as many as five positive remarks from a significant other to compensate for one negative remark from them! Likewise, it takes three positive experiences to compensate for a negative one.

CHAPTER 4

THE FOURTH DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: BEING OVERLY CONTROLLING

• In brief, findings from TMT reveal that, when asked to contemplate death, people become even more deeply attached to their previously held values, ideals, and worldviews.

• The fear of death evokes feelings of uncertainty and lack of control, and people feel threatened by this. So they gravitate toward those things (values, ideals, people, etc.) that make them feel more in control. In other words, the way we deal with the uncertainty of death is to try to wrest back control. And that’s precisely how we deal with other types of uncertainty as well: by seeking to make things more certain.

• A final way in which the need for control manifests itself is through the illusion of control, which refers to the idea that we believe we wield greater control over outcomes than we actually do. In one study involving a lottery, participants were either given lottery tickets at random or allowed to choose their own. They were then given the opportunity to trade these tickets with other tickets that had a higher chance of winning. Findings showed that participants who had chosen their own tickets were more reluctant to trade their tickets. Why? Because they felt that the act of choosing their own tickets had magically given them the power to beat the objective odds. Illusion of control may be an important reason why most of us are less afraid of driving than we are of flying; when driving, we believe that we are more in control of our destiny than when sitting in an airplane that someone else is piloting—even though the objective odds of getting into an accident are far greater when driving than when flying.

• If we have such a deep-seated desire for certainty and control, surely it must serve some important purpose? Several studies show it serves at least two important purposes. First, it helps us believe that we can shape outcomes and events to our liking. That is, the more in control we feel, the more efficacious we feel about achieving the outcomes we desire, and this sense of self-efficacy or competence boosts well-being. In other words, an important reason why being in control enhances happiness is because it makes us feel more competent, and this, in turn, evokes a sense that we are progressing toward the important goal of mastery.

• Given that being in control serves the goals of both competence and autonomy, and given that it has all these beneficial effects on health and happiness, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to know that we seek control. But the question is this: What is the impact of seeking control on happiness? Is the desire for control a good thing or a bad thing? The answer, it turns out, is: it depends. Specifically, seeking control is a good thing—but only up to a point. Studies show that those with a higher need for control generally set loftier goals and also tend to achieve more.

• But what’s also been found is that being too control-seeking—for example, constantly seeking to make things better, or obsessing about achieving outcomes—isn’t a good thing. In other words, there seems to be a tipping point of control-seeking beyond which it lowers happiness levels.

• This desire for autonomy, it turns out, is particularly pronounced among two-year-olds and teenagers.

• When you seek to control others, they exhibit psychological reactance. For example, your attempt to control your spouse’s diet may be met with an increased consumption of unhealthy food—just to spite you. Likewise, your attempt to control your kids to finish their homework may be met with grumpiness or other exhibitions of revolt. This is why, in relationships, you can either have control over others, or you can have their love—not both.

• A related reason why being overly controlling of others lowers happiness is that it results in what the well-known motivational psychologist David McClelland calls “power stress,” which is the tendency to get angry and frustrated when others don’t behave the way you want them to.

• What this suggests is that, when you seek control over others, you set yourself up for negative feelings—anger, frustration, and disappointment—when they don’t behave the way you want them to.

• This is why it is important to surround oneself with people from a variety of backgrounds. This means that when we’re overly controlling of others, our decision making suffers—because we drive away those who disagree with us and thus surround ourselves with only those who don’t mind being controlled: the “yea-sayers.”

• Being overly controlling of outcomes, like being overly controlling of others, also lowers happiness levels for a variety of reasons. Before I get to these reasons, it’s important to note that being overly controlling of outcomes is not the same as being keen on achieving the results one desires. Being really keen to achieve desirable outcomes, like getting into a good school or wanting to be in a great relationship, is a good thing. Findings show that having goals boosts happiness. You cross the line into being overly control-seeking when you become obsessed with achieving the desired outcomes. That is, you are overly controlling when the desire to achieve outcomes controls you, rather than you being in control of the desire to achieve outcomes.

• Another study found that salespeople were more dissatisfied and performed worse when their level of control in interactions with the customer was lower than desired. Yet another study found that when people are put in situations in which they have lower control than they desire, their blood pressure shoots up. These findings indicate that when life doesn’t go according to plan, which happens quite regularly of course, those high in need for control suffer more.

• Findings show that those high in need for control are more likely to take risks and are also likely to become more superstitious in stressful situations than those low in need for control.

• A final reason why being overly controlling of outcomes lowers happiness is because when you want to control something so badly (say, get a particular job) that you are obsessed with that outcome, you are likely to sacrifice other things that make you happy.

• One way to mitigate the desire for control is to learn to appreciate, rather than avoid, uncertainty. As we saw earlier, a big reason why we seek control is because we find uncertainty threatening. But how could one possibly appreciate uncertainty? A good start is to recognize the importance of uncertainty for spicing up life. We all know, at some level, that uncertainty is important, which is why we avoid reading “spoiler alerts” before going to a movie and wouldn’t watch the end of a recorded sporting event before watching the rest of it.

• Another way to feel less time scarce, somewhat counterintuitively, is to engage in social service; findings show that those who engage in social work tend to feel more time abundant. Yet another way of mitigating perceptions of time scarcity is through the experience of awe. Findings show that exposure to awe-inducing images—whales, waterfalls, and the like—slows down perception of time, leading to time affluence. All of these ways of inculcating time affluence should, at least in theory, enhance one’s appreciation for uncertainty and thus help mitigate the desire for control. But of all the ways of mitigating the desire for control, the one that perhaps has the best potential is to take what one might call “internal control.” Taking internal control means retaining the keys to one’s happiness in one’s own hands. It means never blaming anyone else for one’s unhappiness.

THE FOURTH HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: GAINING INTERNAL CONTROL

• So overall, it’s safe to say that my imagined enjoyment of the summer vacations was always far greater than my actual enjoyment of them. But what’s really curious about all this is that, over the fifteen or so summers I spent in Trichy, I consistently overpredicted my enjoyment of them. And it wasn’t just me who did this; everyone, including my mother, sister, cousins, uncles, and aunts, were just as guilty of overpredicting enjoyment from the summers in Trichy.

• And the reason we remember past vacations as having been more enjoyable than they were is because, once a vacation is over, we selectively reminisce about the positive events.

• Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, we overpredict for negative events as well. This is why heart attacks are more common on Monday mornings, before the workweek has really begun, than at any other time of the week.

• Consider what these findings suggest. They suggest that, by merely changing the content of our thoughts, we could control our feelings. So for example, rather than feel angry at your boss for not giving you a raise, you could, instead, feel gratitude toward him if you focused on the fact that he hasn’t fired you. Likewise, rather than feeling sad that your girlfriend is leaving town after spending a week with you, you could feel happy if you focused on all the fun you had during her visit. Extending this logic, it would seem that all one needs to do in order to feel happy (in whichever way one defines happiness) is to interpret events in a way that evokes that feeling. I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that one should always feel happy. Sometimes, one may want to feel sad. For instance, if a good friend is going through a rough patch, you may want to feel sad. Likewise, you may want to feel contrite for failing to fulfill an important obligation. However, if you are like me, you often wish you could feel happier than you currently are.

• I want to introduce to you the notion of taking personal responsibility for your own happiness. Taking personal responsibility means never blaming someone else or the circumstances for how you feel. It means figuring out ways to be happy despite others’ actions and despite the external circumstances.

• Although the external circumstances have control over one’s external state (the outcomes that one experiences), they do not have control over one’s internal state (one’s feelings). This perspective enables retaining the keys to one’s happiness in one’s own hands. By contrast, the other perspective—that of not taking personal responsibility—involves conceding that the external circumstances control not only one’s external state but also one’s internal state.

• One marketing study found that people like to shop when they feel bad because it helps them compensate for lack of control over their feelings.

• The idea that internal control compensates for external control explains how the fourth habit of the highly happy (taking internal control) can help mitigate the fourth deadly happiness sin (being overly controlling). Basically, when one gains sufficient internal control, one doesn’t feel the need to control others or the external circumstances as much.

• In this regard, developing internal control is similar to building muscle. Just as you are more likely to build muscle when you exercise using appropriate weights—weights that are neither too light nor too heavy—you are more likely to develop internal control by taking on challenges that are commensurate with your current abilities.

• Another tactic is “emotion labeling.” This tactic literally involves coming up with a label to describe what you are feeling; for example, telling yourself “I am feeling angry” when you experience anger. Findings show that merely labeling your feelings lowers their intensity. If you find this surprising, you are not alone; most people predict that labeling their feelings will intensify them. This may be because we confuse labeling emotions with ruminating about them when in fact they are different. Labeling literally means making a note of what you are feeling and moving on.

• The final tactic is cognitive reappraisal. This strategy involves reinterpreting the negative situation so as to feel better about it. Say you are feeling stressed out about an impending meeting. In this situation, you could tell yourself that, far from feeling anxious, you should feel blessed that your work doesn’t involve meaningless menial labor, and that the “problem” you are currently facing is really a “first world problem” that you should be privileged to have. Cognitive reappraisal, as you can tell, involves putting things in perspective. In executing the four emotional regulation tactics (situation selection, labeling emotions, attention deployment, and cognitive reappraisal), it’s important to avoid engaging in self-serving bias. What’s also important to avoid is suppressing negative feelings, because findings show that, contrary to what many of us believe, it doesn’t mitigate feelings. This is because the parts of the brain that are activated when we feel negative continue to remain activated even if we suppress the feelings. Further, suppressing emotions takes brain capacity, and this means less leftover capacity to focus on the task at hand. Finally, when we suppress our feelings, others can usually sense it and this increases their stress levels and lowers how much they like us. For these reasons, it may not be a good idea to suppress emotions.

• Emotion regulation tactics offer a powerful way to take internal control. But an arguably more powerful way to take internal control is to lead a healthier lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle involves three main components: eating right, moving more, and sleeping better. There is overwhelming evidence that each of these components has a big positive effect on both physical and mental health. Thus, leading a healthy lifestyle makes you feel good from the inside out. Further, it improves your ability to handle life’s stressors.

• Leading a healthy lifestyle—by eating right, moving more, and sleeping better—makes us feel more in control of our lives.

• Moving more constitutes a nonsedentary lifestyle. Findings show that sitting for more than six hours a day is one of the worst things you could do to yourself, as it greatly increases the chances of early death. According to a number of studies, sitting is just as bad as smoking when it comes to the risk of heart disease. Another study found, along similar lines, that inactivity kills more people worldwide than does smoking. Yet another study found that, even if you exercise a lot—one hour of vigorous exercise a day, or seven hours of exercise every week—it may still not be enough to counteract the bad effects of sitting. One study found that even among those who exercise a lot, those who spent most of their time sitting had a 50 percent greater risk of death. What this means is that you can’t sit all day and exercise for one hour and think you’re safe—you need to move more regularly throughout the day.

• Findings showed that 95 percent of people needed between seven and nine hours of sleep per night to feel well rested. Only 2.5 percent of the participants felt well rested with less than seven hours of sleep. So if you feel that you can perform perfectly well with six hours or less of sleep, you may not be aware how much better you could be if you got more sleep. Several findings confirm that we make worse decisions when sleep deprived. For instance, getting just ninety minutes less sleep than you need lowers your daytime alertness by a third! You are also less likely to make unhealthy food choices if you have slept well. Sleep also affects mood, as I am sure you have realized.

• Most people recognize the importance of leading a healthier lifestyle, but are equally terrible at translating this recognition into action. That’s where the fourth exercise of the highly happy—something I call the “schedule partner project”—comes in.

• This step of the exercise is based on an interesting finding from research on goal pursuit: you are much more likely to achieve a goal when you are jointly pursuing it alongside someone else rather than all by yourself.

CHAPTER 5

THE FIFTH DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: DISTRUSTING OTHERS

• In general, the more prosperous a country, the happier its citizens. Likewise, people who live in stable democracies are happier than those who live in violent autocracies. However, something else matters more than economic prosperity or political ideology. That something is trust.

• Findings from one study showed, for example, that the more the citizens of a country responded to the question “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” with “most people can be trusted” rather than with “need to be very careful,” the happier the citizens were.

• In another study that explored the impact of trust on happiness, researchers “accidentally” left twelve wallets containing the equivalent of about $50 in sixteen cities around the world. The wallet also contained the address of its purported owner. After leaving the wallets around, the experimenters sat back and counted the number of wallets that got returned to the “owner.” They used the proportion of wallets that were returned as a proxy for the trustworthiness of the country. Once again, trust turned out to be a major determinant of happiness: the greater the proportion of wallets returned, the happier the country.

• Imagine that you couldn’t trust your friends to divvy up a restaurant bill equitably. Or imagine that you couldn’t trust any of your colleagues to keep a secret. When you can’t trust others, you can’t relax, and when you can’t relax, you can’t be happy.

• Many of us can’t bring ourselves to trust others because of our hardwired cynicism. And yet, if everyone (or at least a critical mass) could overcome this predisposition, we would all benefit. Specifically, by proactively trusting others, we would build mutual trust, and this in turn would enhance everyone’s happiness.

• John Gottman, one of the best-known researchers in the area of relationships, finds that it takes as many as five trustworthy behaviors to overcome the negative feelings generated by just one untrustworthy behavior!

THE FIFTH HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: EXERCISING “SMART TRUST”

• I arrived at this last insight on the basis of something quite well known in social psychology, namely, that people’s propensities (attitudes, behaviors, etc.) aren’t necessarily set in stone; rather, they are more fluid. As an example, few people are unqualified saints or unequivocal devils; rather, depending on the situation, most of us are capable of exhibiting both saintliness and devilishness.

• The factor that holds most sway in which propensity—saintliness or devilishness—we exhibit in any given moment is the context in which we find ourselves. If we find ourselves in a context (like in church) in which saintliness is expected of everyone, and everyone around us is, in fact, behaving in a saintly fashion, then we are likely to do the same. If, however, we find ourselves in a context in which “devilishness” is not just permitted but actively encouraged (certain areas of Las Vegas spring to mind here), we are more likely to tread on the devilish end of the spectrum. In other words, the extent to which people exhibit trustworthiness is not set in stone; few people are always trustworthy or untrustworthy.

• Before trusting someone, I decide that I am not going to let them go scot-free if they cheat me; I tell myself that I am going to chase them down and give them a piece of my mind if they do. Of course, the purpose of chasing them down is not to take revenge; rather, it is to try to understand what led them to violate my trust.

• Knowing is understanding, and understanding is forgiving.

• Think of someone you dislike—not someone you hate with all your guts (hopefully, you don’t know anyone like that), but someone you merely dislike. Let’s call this person “X.” Now, imagine that you were born with X’s genetic material. That is, you had X’s looks, body odor, inherent tastes, intelligence, aptitudes, and so on. Further, imagine that you had X’s upbringing and experiences as well: you were born into the family in which X was born. So imagine that you had X’s parents, grew up in the same neighborhood and city, went to the same school, had the same set of friends, etc. Do you think you would behave any differently from how X behaves?

• And once this realization sinks in, one is naturally more likely to get past the knee-jerk tendency to judge others’ behaviors as “good” and “bad,” and go to the next step: of trying to understand why people behave the way they do.

CHAPTER 6

THE SIXTH DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: PASSIONATE/INDIFFERENT PURSUIT OF PASSION

• At some level, we all know—or should know—that we don’t have the ability to figure out all the downstream consequences that an outcome will trigger.

• And because we lack the ability to figure out the downstream consequences of outcomes, we also lack the knowledge to calculate the overall impact that the outcome will have on our life. In other words, expressed in business-speak, we lack the knowledge to calculate the “net present value” (NPV) of any outcome. An outcome that currently seems positive (like getting married to a sweetheart) may well turn out later—as it often does—to be negative. And likewise, an outcome (like divorce) that currently seems negative may later turn out to be the best thing that happened. That’s just how life is—unpredictable and whimsical. As such, we shouldn’t hold strong views about the goodness and badness of outcomes we experience.

• The fact that we are happier when we are busy than when not, and the fact that we are even happier when doing something meaningful—rather than meaningless—has a very important implication. It suggests that we don’t need to depend on outcomes for happiness—we could derive all our happiness from the process of working toward outcomes. We could, for example, derive happiness from preparing for an exam or from planning for a vacation.

• Delinking happiness from outcomes refers to judging outcomes only after they have occurred, and not before they have occurred.

• This approach, which is the sixth habit of the highly happy, is what I call “the dispassionate pursuit of passion.” It involves having a preference for certain outcomes over others before they have occurred, but being nonjudgmental about them after they have occurred. The dispassionate pursuit of passion might seem like a very difficult thing to pull off—and it is.

THE SIXTH HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: DISPASSIONATE PURSUIT OF PASSION

• We know from personal experience that our feelings toward both negative and positive events generally become less intense with time. What is interesting, however, is that this change is more pronounced for negative—versus positive—events. This suggests that negative events lose their sting more rapidly than positive ones lose their glow, which is cool. For instance, we will likely continue to savor the positive feelings from our first kiss and from our last vacation long after they are over, but not harbor negative feelings about losing money in a scam or failing an exam for as long.

• None of these results is, however, as interesting as the next one I am about to share with you. This result has to do with how meaningful people find past events to be. It turns out that people find past negative events to be significantly more meaningful than they do past positive events. The reason for this is that negative events provide far greater opportunity for growth and learning than do the positive ones. Of course, some water needs to have flowed under the bridge since the negative event occurred for this to happen. That is, we can’t as easily see the meaning in negative events that have recently transpired. However, the fact that once a sufficient amount of time has passed, it is negative (rather than positive) events that are seen as more meaningful is striking. What’s even more striking—and to me, the most interesting finding of all—is that the past events that we find the most meaningful are often the ones that we were the most intensely negative about when they occurred!

• As it turns out, there are many reasons why our feelings toward past negative events change with time, including something I mentioned earlier: negative events make us learn and grow in ways we wouldn’t have if they hadn’t occurred. For instance, we are likely to be more compassionate and kind—and therefore practice the need to love and give—if we have experienced pain and suffering than if we haven’t. Negative events can also make us wiser—more capable of dealing with the “curveballs” that life often throws at us. Another reason why we come to see past negative events in a brighter light with time is because of the “bragging rights” they afford. Although you may not have enjoyed the grueling hike up Kilimanjaro or relished the hideous dish that you were persuaded to eat on a “cultural tour” of a strange new land (think fried worms—disgustingly delicious!) while they happened, they likely served a useful purpose on your first date or at dull office parties. Finally, negative events can also make us feel better about ourselves. We feel stronger and more resilient when we reminisce about negative events and realize that we have lived through them.

• Placebo effects are so prevalent in medical contexts that any test of the effectiveness of a new drug involves comparing it with a control condition in which a placebo drug, like a sugar pill, is given to patients. What these placebo effects tell us is that our beliefs can shape our reality. If you think that a pill is going to cure a disease, there seems to be an objectively greater chance that it will cure the disease than if you think that it won’t.

• I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that every subjective belief shapes objective reality. For example, no matter how firmly you believe that the Earth has two moons, it’s not going to change the objective reality. However, what’s also equally true is that, in some contexts, there’s no denying that our subjective beliefs do shape objective reality.

• For instance, findings from the area of religion and spirituality show that those who hold a spiritual attitude toward life lead happier lives than those who don’t. Likewise, findings show that optimists and those who hold a more positive outlook toward life are happier than their more pessimistic counterparts.

CHAPTER 7

THE SEVENTH DEADLY HAPPINESS “SIN”: MIND ADDICTION

• The idea that many of our decisions are based on emotions is, of course, not newsworthy; most of us are aware that emotions play a huge role in influencing decisions. What’s also not news is that we often feel compelled to justify our emotional decisions on the basis of “rational” reasons, which is why we have the term post hoc rationalization. What is newsworthy, however, is that we feel uneasy admitting that our decisions are driven by feelings. The reason we feel uneasy about admitting the influence of feelings is because of an implicit assumption we harbor: that our feelings serve to hinder, rather than enhance, the quality of our judgments and decisions.

• I use the term “mind addiction” to refer to the tendency to ignore or underestimate the importance of gut instincts and feelings. Mind addiction stems from two interrelated beliefs: (1) that the most reliable way to solve any problem is through thoughtful deliberation, and (2) that feelings and gut instincts serve more to detract from, rather than enhance, the quality of judgments and decisions.

• One reason “thinking too much” gets in the way of making happiness-maximizing choices is because thoughts distract us from the intelligence in our feelings and gut instincts. As findings from several studies suggest, our gut instincts and feelings aren’t random and arbitrary; rather, they are the repository of a lot of useful information that served us well in our adaptive past.

• Another reason we underestimate the importance of feelings and gut instincts, I believe, has to do with the types of goals we seek. Most goals we seek tend to be quantitative in nature—goals such as losing a certain number of pounds by the end of the year, or amassing a certain amount of wealth by retirement. We seek quantifiable goals because they are more concrete

• However, thoughtful deliberation can only go so far in generating ideas, particularly inspiring ones. Our most inspiring ideas are almost always the product of the subconscious. Or, put differently, without the cooperation of feelings and gut instincts, thoughtful deliberation would be severely handicapped. This is because, ultimately, the source of all of our ideas—and not just our most creative and inspiring ones—is our subconscious.

• This is why our best ideas come to us when we are not actively thinking of the problem we are trying to solve, but rather are thinking of something else altogether.

• The next set of problems associated with mind addiction is rooted in a different phenomenon: lack of self-awareness.

• According to Davidson, lack of self-awareness is one of the biggest happiness killers. Why? One reason is because, without a certain level of self-awareness, one is unlikely to recognize the ways in which one might be sabotaging one’s own happiness.

• Here’s a simple example that illustrates this idea. Imagine, just for kicks, that although you are someone who places a great deal of emphasis on being superior to others, you also want to appear as if you couldn’t care less about superiority. That is, imagine that although you are actually very status conscious, you wish to believe that you couldn’t care two hoots about your standing relative to others. Imagine also (again, just for kicks) that although you are deeply insecure and needy in relationships, you believe that you are the epitome of secure attachment. Now, the less self-aware you are, the more easily you could pull off this self-delusion; that is, the more easily you could convince yourself that you aren’t status conscious or insecure when in fact you are.

• So from the perspective of maximizing happiness, the more sensible thing to do would be to stop deluding yourself and become more honest so that you can get to the bottom of the ways in which you may be sabotaging your own happiness.

• The decision of whether to go with gut feel or thoughtful deliberation may ultimately be more of an art than a science.

• A final context in which it may be better to go with thoughtful deliberation is when making a decision on behalf of a group, particularly if the outcome you’re looking for is a functional one (like recruiting someone for an open position in your organization) rather than a hedonic one (like choosing a venue for the end-of-year party). This is because, as I mentioned earlier, people like those who make decisions based on thoughtful deliberation more than those who make them based on feelings and gut instincts.

THE SEVENTH HABIT OF THE HIGHLY HAPPY: MINDFULNESS

• We are immersed in a web of GATEs—Goals, Actions (or Action-tendencies), Thoughts, and Emotions. Or, put differently, our life involves being caught in a web of consequences that life’s experiences, interacting with the GATEs of our mind, weave for us. For instance, if we get shouted at by our boss, we may experience anger that, in turn, triggers thoughts of revenge that trigger certain actions which trigger other feelings that trigger another set of thoughts or goals that trigger new actions, and so on.

• There is, however, another way to break a negative GATE web. This way, of course, is to step outside the GATE of your head, to merely observe what’s going on—to be a fly in the wall of your head.

• So, although taking the perspective of bare attention does involve observing things as if they were happening to someone else, if one manages to do it right—that is, if one manages to keep one’s mind out of it—one would end up getting closer to the object of observation.

• What the mind labels “anxiety,” for example, reduces to sensations like clamminess in the palms and feet, a slightly faster heart rate, undulations (or “butterflies”) in the stomach—nothing, in other words, that is inherently scary or even unpleasant. But the same sensations, when judged, categorized, and ruminated or commented upon, not only take on an ominous flavor, but also tend to persist because the mental activity keeps the GATE web alive. By merely observing a negative feeling, in other words, you allow the GATE web to slow and calm down and therefore allow the negative feelings to die more quickly.

• Think of “mind-wandering” as roughly the opposite of being mindful. When mind-wandering, your mind is all over the place, and isn’t focused on any one thing. A New Yorker cartoon captured the idea of mind-wandering better than perhaps any I know: it shows three panels, with the same guy featured in all. In the first panel, the man is at work, but thinking about playing golf; in the second, he’s playing golf and thinking about having sex; while in the third, he’s having sex and thinking about work!

• Here’s what the findings showed: regardless of whether the activity was pleasant or not, participants were less happy when they were mind-wandering versus not. Or, put differently, people were happiest, even when doing something unpleasant, when their mind was in the here and now than when it wasn’t. This means that you are always better off—in terms of enhancing happiness levels—being mindful than not.

• We all know that our attitudes affect our behavior. For instance, we can all see how a person who believes that “life is a zero-sum game”—that one can only win if someone else loses—is more likely to seek superiority than one who believes that “life’s pie can be grown.” Likewise, we can also see how a person who trusts others by default is more likely to be willing to sign off a deal on a handshake than one who distrusts others by default. What many of us don’t realize, however, is that our behaviors can affect our attitudes too. For example, someone who regularly practices gratitude will likely become less prone to chasing superiority. Similarly, practicing kindness and compassion will likely mitigate neediness and avoidance. One reason behavior affects attitude is because of something called self-perception: when we observe that we have behaved a certain way (like compassionately), we search for explanations for that behavior and conclude that it must be because our attitude is consistent with that behavior. In other words, behaving as if we are compassionate, even if we don’t really feel so compassionate, eventually leads us into thinking and feeling like a compassionate person.

• Consider, in particular, that happy people are in the moment, as findings on flow reveal. Specifically, a prominent feature of flow is being in the moment and, as we saw in chapter 2B, flow enhances enjoyment. Now consider that a prominent feature of mindfulness, too, is being in the moment. So it follows, that being mindful would make you happy.

• Practicing mindfulness also lowers the activation of the amygdala, which is associated with worrying and stress. In other words, mindfulness boosts happiness levels by simultaneously thickening parts of the brain associated with positivity and deactivating parts of the brain associated with stress and worrying.

• Findings from one study showed that those who practiced mindfulness were far less prone to stress when told to give a speech and perform mental calculations in front of an audience.

• In addition to enhancing well-being in both direct and indirect ways, mindfulness also improves one’s chances of success in the workplace by boosting something called “response flexibility”—the ability to pause before acting or reacting. That is, mindfulness enhances one’s chances of career success by fostering the ability to react to situations in a more conscious manner.

• In reality, mindfulness is not about not thinking. Rather, it’s about “changing one’s relationship with thoughts.”

• To summarize, I tell myself the following three things just before, and during, each mindfulness session: Each session is new and so don’t have any expectations. The only goal is to be a fly in the wall, and no other goal matters. When I deviate from this goal, use a combination of self-compassion and dispassionate pursuit of passion to course-correct.

• Most people find it easier to observe a bodily sensation rather than what’s going on in the mind. In particular, it seems that observing the breath is perhaps the easiest way to practice mindfulness. There are many reasons why the breath is a good thing to observe. It is constantly changing—you are always breathing in or breathing out or holding your breath—so it’s a little more interesting to observe than, say, the sensations in your hands. At the same time, it’s not so much in flux—like your thoughts—that it’s difficult to observe.

CHAPTER 8: THE ROAD AHEAD

• A bird’s-eye view of this book’s content would suggest that, once our basic necessities are met, we need three main things to be happy. The first thing we need is to feel that we are good at something—dancing, painting, teaching, etc. Let’s call this the need for “Mastery.” We discussed this need in several contexts, including how one of the reasons we seek superiority is so that we can assess our progress toward Mastery. We also discussed it in the context of flow—how flow enhances happiness by enabling progress toward Mastery. Yet another context in which we discussed Mastery is “taking personal responsibility for happiness.” A big reason why taking personal responsibility—or “internal control”—enhances happiness is because it fosters personal Mastery—Mastery over one’s own thoughts and feelings.

• The second thing we need is to feel a sense of intimacy or connection with at least one other person. Let’s call this the need to “Belong.” We discussed this need in many contexts as well, including “the need to be loved” and “the need to love (and give).” It is the need to Belong that, among those who didn’t get sufficient or the right kind of love and nurturance, makes some of us needy and the others among us avoidant. It is the same need that is at least partly responsible for why we feel happy when we exhibit kindness and generosity, and why we like it when others reciprocate trust with trustworthiness.

• The third thing we need is to feel a sense of freedom—to feel that we, rather than others—are the authors of our own judgments and decisions. Let’s call this the need for “Autonomy.” We discussed this need in many contexts, including how higher status fulfills it, and how it provokes psychological reactance among those who feel controlled by others. The need for Autonomy also figured in the discussion of internal control—specifically, how gaining internal control enhances happiness by granting us Autonomy over our own thoughts and feelings—and also in the context of mindfulness.

• The importance of all three needs has been well documented across several findings. What would be news, however—and I consider this to be the main contribution of this book—is that the fulfillment of Mastery, Belonging, and Autonomy, while necessary, isn’t sufficient. What’s also critical is using the right approach or route in seeking fulfillment of these needs.

• There are two routes to Mastery: pursuing superiority and pursuing flow. Likewise, there are two routes to Belonging: desperation for love and the need to love (and give). In the case of Autonomy, the two routes are the need for external control and the need for internal control.

• By contrast, the three alternative routes to MBA stem from an abundance orientation. It is when one feels adequately taken care of that one is more likely to pursue something purely for the enjoyment that one derives from it (flow), rather than for extrinsic rewards. Likewise, it is when one feels abundant—like a king or a queen—that one feels truly capable of generosity. Similarly, it is when one feels abundant in terms of confidence to handle whatever life throws at one that one feels comfortable to let go of external control and seek internal control instead. So the recipe for leading a life of happiness and fulfillment ultimately boils down to weaning oneself away from scarcity orientation and toward abundance orientation.

• Specifically, apart from boosting happiness levels, chances of success, and altruism at the personal level, it is likely to boost meaningful productivity at the societal level.

• As Sonja Lyubomirsky notes in The How of Happiness, “a compelling case can be made that the level of material comfort you are experiencing today is equivalent to how the top 5 percent lived a mere half a century ago!” As a result, with each passing year, an ever increasing number of people in the world know, from personal experience—rather than as an abstract concept—that greater wealth does not automatically translate into greater happiness. A natural consequence of this trend is an increase in genuine interest in learning about the determinants of happiness and fulfillment. As a result, I expect future generations to be less scarcity-minded and more abundance-minded.

• Cultural inertia is a big reason why people think and act in ways that are antithetical to leading a happy and fulfilling life. Another reason people act in ways that lower their own happiness levels is because of the evaluability of goals, which refers to the idea that people accord greater importance to goals that are easier to measure, even if they are less important.

• This leads me to the first strategy for sustaining happiness, which is to “respond to daily questions” posed by what Goldsmith calls a “peer coach.” A peer coach is someone who will ask you a series of questions on an everyday basis to make sure that you are on track to mitigating the happiness sins and reinforcing the happiness habits.

  • Did I do my best to prioritize—but not pursue—happiness?
  • Did I do my best to be self-compassionate (but not self-indulgent or self-pitying) when I failed at something?
  • Did I do my best to be grateful for the good things that came my way?
  • Did I do my best to pursue flow and steer myself towards doing something meaningful and engaging as opposed to seeking superiority?
  • Did I do my best to not be needy or avoidant?
  • Did I do my best to not be a taker or matcher, but rather, a Giver?
  • Did I do my best to practice kindness and generosity in “otherish” vs. “selfless” ways?
  • Did I do my best to not be overly controlling of others or of outcomes?
  • Did I do my best to take personal responsibility for my happiness (by seeking internal control)?
  • Did I do my best to lead a healthy lifestyle (by eating right, moving more, and sleeping better)?
  • Did I do my best to exercise “smart trust”?
  • Did I do my best to be forgiving of others?
  • Did I do my best to look for positive consequences of even negative events?
  • Did I do my best to practice mindfulness?